This could be a story about how sad Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson might be if they stopped by the Presidio Hills Golf Course lately.

At this little spot in Old Town, on a pitch-and-putt course opened in 1932, future pros who were only elementary schoolers at the time held shiny trophies to celebrate their wins in the Junior World Championships.

Woods, Mickelson, Lorena Ochoa, Ernie Els … they all won here.

Groups of kids came for decades to compete, and some, like Mickelson, still occasionally return as adults with their children to recall heroic shots and reminisce.

The problem right now is they’d have to look closely to recognize the place. Though the putting surfaces and most of the tees are green, they are surrounded by large patches of brown grass or swatches of dirt. Even when it’s neatly mowed, Presidio Hills looks a bit unkempt.

But that’s the problem with easy storylines and first impressions. There are more issues at Presidio Hills than some rough areas of grass, and if the City of San Diego doesn’t step up with solutions, one of the city’s recreational – and historical -- landmarks will continue to rot.

A television “troubleshooter” report a couple of weeks ago told half the story. Larry Stirling, a prominent judge and former city councilman, raised issues about poor maintenance, untrimmed trees, discarded trash and graffiti on a maintenance building.

They were mostly valid complaints, and the leaseholder, Justine Lee, acknowledged that and moved quickly to address them. The biggest issues remain, however.

Lee and the greenskeeper who has been at the course for 10 years, Bob Grady, are working with an 80-year-old irrigation system and a razor-thin financial bottom line that makes paying the rent and water bill every month painful. Grady drags around 400-feet sections of hoses just to get the greener areas watered. He sometimes stays until 10 at night to ensure the water doesn’t evaporate in the heat of the day.

“It’s like leasing a car without an engine,” Grady said in a thick Bostonian accent.

Lee, also the proprietor of the Bonita Driving Range, took over the existing lease 31 months ago. He was the only applicant, taking it on more as a labor of love than anything else. The lease is set to expire at the end of 2013, though paperwork for a six-month extension has been submitted to Mayor Bob Filner’s office. Barry Slotten, a city property agent who is assigned to Presidio Hills, said Monday the six-month lease does lower the monthly rent.

Lee’s two sons competed in Junior World at Presidio, and he hoped to bring the tournament back after several years of absence. But as these couple years have passed it has become clear that it would be hard to return to the course to conditions of the past without a long-term lease, possible restructuring of the rent terms or the water bill, and a replacement of the irrigation system at an estimated cost of $120,000.

The entire piece of land is historically designated, by the way, so imagine the headaches in getting work done on it. Basically, turning over one shovel of dirt would require expert supervision. It took three years to get approval to have a shed replaced, for heaven's sake.

Lee asks: Why would a savvy businessperson invest heavily in a project with no guarantee of a long-term return?

With green fees of $10 weekdays and $12 weekends ($8 and $10 for juniors and seniors), there isn’t a big margin for profit at a course that Lee says averages around 30 rounds a day. Lee insists he breaks even, at best, while providing the city with a steady, albeit small stream of revenue. He said more than 30 percent of his revenue is expended on water. The course looks worse this summer, Grady said, because the winter was so dry.

“Unfortunately, it’s hard to maintain a golf course when you’re not capable of putting a lot of water on it,” said Kevin Lee, Justine Lee’s son. “You look at the people playing each month and you have to weigh the costs.

“We understand the historical aspect of the course and the number of people who remember it from when they were juniors. But no one is going to operate the course on a negative every month to keep people’s nostalgia alive.”

If Presidio is to have any future, the city needs to recognize the problems and address them. Does it value Presidio Hills enough to, say, put it under the umbrella of the golf enterprise fund, which is loaded with millions in surplus cash thanks to Torrey Pines?

The city’s golf managers will cringe about that one because they have a lot on their plate, but what are the other solutions, short of cutting a sweet deal with a leaseholder to keep a beloved city artifact intact?

Is it worth it? The city and its golfers need to decide, because make no mistake, Presidio Hills is slowly dying.